The Era of Ayn Rand?

Just the other day I had NPR on in the background while I played with my son and an interview caught my ear. I believe it was Robert Siegle interviewing someone whose name, unfortunately, I did not catch. The unnamed individual was giving commentary on Alan Greenspan's comments concerning the recent economic fiasco. If you've been living under a rock, just pick up the nearest newspaper and looking for the large headlines dripping with blood and screaming with boldface font and triple exclamation point ... metaphorically of course; it'll tell you all about it. I won't go into what Greenspan said. The Objectivist Blog-o-sphere is already tearing him a new one for it (get 'em Gus, Robert, C.August of Titanic Deck Chairs ). However, the person giving commentary said one thing that absolutely enraged me. His utterance was, "the era of Ayn Rand is over." Now, given that he can also be quoted as saying Rand believed that "government was tyrannical" he obviously has no idea what Objectivism is and should keep his trap shut. However, anyone listening to his broadcast may now believe that our current mess is a result of "Randian" policies. My question for this guy, if I ever met him in a dark alley, would be, "when exactly did the 'Era of Ayn Rand' start?"

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957. The same year Eisenhower was re-elected. The same Eisenhower that continued all of the New Deal programs and formed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This is the same year the government first tried to launch a satellite ... it blew up on the pad. The same year Operation Dropshot was conceived to preemptively instigate hostilities with the USSR. But, maybe Atlas didn't have time to sink in yet.

What about a decade later in 1967? Our 16 year misadventure in Vietnam was still eight years from its abortive end; meanwhile tens of thousands of war protesters watch Allen Ginsberg chant to "levitate" the pentagon. LBJ signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 handing out our tax dollars so the above idiot can spout his misinformation. In LBJ's words, "It announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a 'chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act." Additionally, "It will give a wider and, I think, stronger voice to educational radio and television by providing new funds for broadcast facilities. It will launch a major study of television's use in the Nation's classrooms and their potential use throughout the world. Finally — and most important — it builds a new institution: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting." Yes, because new institutions are very important, and I am so glad the government is concerned with my spiritual growth. Here I thought they were just safeguarding my individual rights.

Okay, maybe it's a generational thing, how about 1982? The national debt was $110 billion by the end of the year. How does that relate to federal spending over those 25 years? I think this tells the tale. It's a chart plotted using the White House's data.

How's about the new Millennium? Clinton told us "the era of big government is over" four years earlier so by 2000 we were probably in great shape, right? Well, Bush got nominated by the Republicans and he's a dyed in the wool Objectivist if ever there was. Microsoft got hammered by antitrust laws. Just imagine if the lawyers who prosecuted them weren't allowed to use PCs; Microsoft might have had a fighting chance. Six year old Elian Gonzalez, whose mother died (drowned at sea) getting him to the US, was forcibly repatriated to freedom loving Cuba after federal agents raided his relatives' house. This picture says all that needs to be said. In 2008 he joined the Young Communist League of Cuba.

I have no desire to revisit anything but my personal memories from the years 2001-2008. We see the pattern, and the previous eight painful years have held pretty-much nothing but more of the same; as I'm sure the next four to eight will. The above events are cited because they happened to occur during the randomly chosen years mentioned. If I were to research and target specific events, I'm sure this post would be much, much longer. After all, there's no mention of the Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, or various legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act and only one use of antitrust laws. In fact, the things I've written about seem downright innocuous compared to what I could have written about. So, my question for the overheard ass-hat on NPR, restated, is, "when, in the past 50 years, was the era of restricted government, Laissez-Faire Capitalism, and promotion of personal freedom?" And to think, I had actually considered giving money to them this year ... wait, thanks to LBJ, I did.

~Adam

[edit 10/31] I just found this to drive the point home a little further.